1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a lighting network control apparatus and method and, more particularly, to bidirectional lighting communication technology in which in a Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI) protocol-based lighting network environment, each lighting control gear that has detected an error or a change in the lighting environment can make an error or situation report to a lighting control device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Existing DALI is a lighting control protocol that can be utilized in dimming systems for a conference room, a lecture hall, a shop and showroom of a department store, a museum, an exhibition space, a luxury room, etc. Existing DALI is based on a master-slave structure, and is thus configured such that each lighting control gear can be controlled using a command from a master and the master can report its state using only a query command.
In the meantime, the emotional state and work efficiency of humans may be highly affected by a lighting environment, and an existing DALI-based bidirectional communication scheme is limited in that it can neither actively deal with changes in the lighting environment nor provide an optimum lighting environment.
Therefore, there is a need for the development of bidirectional communication-based lighting control technology that can be used to check and collect control gear and lighting state information in a lighting control system almost in real time.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2012-142181 discloses a method of setting or changing an assigned information table for each user using a network and sending information about the control of a lighting apparatus to the main body of the lighting apparatus based on the information table. However, the technology disclosed in this Japanese patent application publication is limited in that it is impossible to check and collect control gear and lighting state information almost in real time.